RIPENING
SEASONS

Issue #37, June 2000

Just a letter, this time, to all my friends . . .

So we climbed and we climbed,
and finally reached this plateau, at 2000 metres (okay... years!),
and . . . whew, I guess I was pooped. The thing about Aries is that
he loves challenge, but doesn't care much for the long haul sort of
thing. Not that I'm gonna lay down and die - and I know I
can't return - but maybe I'll just camp here for awhile, and take in
this rarefied air. Let the world play its own games, without my
not-so-willing participation.

I can hear the heckling from the sideline: "What a crock! You
never participated, anyway!" True, my friends, very true. But I was
always along for the observation and commentary, and now I don't even
feel like doing that much! This is a lovely plateau, and I'm still a
bit burned from that last crazy stretch that it took to get here. So
I'm just going to stake it for awhile.

Hell, maybe I'll stay! The view is good -- the overlook view, that
is; I'm not really very concerned about the view of everybody
marching onward and upward. I mean . . . 2000 was the only crest I
had any interest in. I thought there was going to be a New Age up
here, but it's only the same old age with a mask on. Hype and Hoopla!
Listen to 'em . . .

"Hey, guys, step it up! It's just over the next ridge!
Buy a new, ultra model Orgasma 2001, and move it along, or
you'll miss out on all those extra pleasures!" [or was that
"treasures"? My hearing isn't so good now, with all these
pulsating reverbs, around.]

Anyway, I've heard it all, too many times to be pulled in again.
I've found as much New Age as I'm about to, realizing now that it's a
young man's game. Okay, a young old man's game; but you cross
the bar at 70, and recognize the door you came in through, and know
there's not much point in going around again. Not if you're really
satisfied with what you've already got out of it -- and that I
am!

So it's settlement time for me. Laying-back time, on the edge of
the big plateau, where I can marvel at the view of the territory
traveled.

It's really pretty neat, being off to the side of the marching
crowd. Sort of like the days when I dropped out, many years ago --
which is about as far as I can see, out there on the horizon, with
m'naked eye (the good one). Those were times of pure fright and
wonder! Before I even found the trail that led to all the goodies.
Yet, there I was, telling people what it was all about. And I
didn't even really know, yet!

Dropping out is just getting off the main track, letting the train
go on without you. But you've gotta find the trail, before
anything is really gained. The trail that ultimately leads to a
rejuvenated innocence -- the kind I was reveling in, in Innocence
Abroad. It actually took me several years to really hit that
trail, or to be fully aware of what it was all about. But I had no
qualms, in those Black Bart and "Finding a Way Out" days (the
classes I did), about 'leading the blind,' who never knew that I was,
too! Of course, I didn't know it, myself.

I think, maybe, the book was too vague, as to what Innocence - as
I use the term - is all about. Innocence is facing the world without
preconception as to the meaning of things that happen in it. It's not
an easy state of mind to reach, since everything that touches our
awareness sets off associative runs of thought and 'understanding.' I
put it within quotes, because we're not really understanding anything
at all, just flashing back on previous experience, and whatever
that turned out to mean. But this world is fresh every moment,
and Innocence is nothing more than taking it as fresh
experience.

My trip to Europe, being the very first, had to be fresh every
moment. With a well-served apprenticeship behind me, in the art of
just letting things happen - the very essence of a trail of Innocence
- it could hardly have been otherwise than the high experience it
was.

If we could approach our ordinary lives in this way, every
single day would be a high experience! The trick is to stand back
from life, with enough disengagement to ignore the rush of
know-it-all prejudgments that insist on pushing their way in, every
time something new develops in our world. I'm talking about
whatever you think I could be talking about - deliberately
vague, as the idea can apply to so many kinds of situations.
Anyplace, anytime that a preconception steps in front of the
freshness of the moment, we kill the aliveness of it.

The art of 'letting it happen' is also vital to the recognition of
Providence. Or else a recognition of Providence makes it easier to
step into the flow of 'letting it happen' -- I'm not sure that either
element takes precedence over the other, they seem to work hand in
hand. And I suspect that people who have difficulty with one, will be
having difficulty with the other.

I can give you an illustration from
immediate experience. I've had a recent medical diagnosis of sleep
apnea, which has to do with mini-awakenings, all night long, in
order to keep breathing - and in consequence of which, one never
really gets enough deep sleep during the night, and regularly gets
drowsy during the waking day. Over the long haul, this is said to
be a deadly risk, best managed by sleeping with a breathing mask
over the nose -- not as a cure, but as a way of making sure that
breathing doesn't just suddenly stop . . . for good!

Okay, the interesting thing about this is that I had no
awareness of the problem. I mean, sure, I was getting drowsy in
classes, and even sitting at my computer, but I just figured it
was a normal component of old age combined with boredom. I never
checked it with a doctor. It happened, however, that I was seeing
Dr. B about intestinal stuff, who thought I sounded hoarse and
sent me to Dr. M for an acid reflux checkup, who - as an
afterthought - suggested I see Dr. K for an overnight sleep test,
and -- sure enough, it indicated apnea!

Well, I could see this as a run of Providence, pure and simple:
getting from B to K, with no symptoms reported, and never a
complaint. In fact, I kept arguing with Dr. B about whether I
really had any hoarseness! But once I began to consider what apnea
is all about, a large misgiving came up for me. Here's how it
goes:

One of these days, I am certainly going to die, right? And
among the many possible ways of dying, I would most rather it be
some simple, quiet way, with no great drama, no need of being
doped-up for pain, and preferably at home instead of in some alien
hospital ward packed with beeping machinery, and tubes into every
orifice (including a few that hadn't been there before) - in fact,
it would be most agreeable to just die in my sleep. Nature does,
indeed, provide this avenue, though to fewer and fewer of us as we
get better and better at medical detection and care. So here comes
the 'discovery' of apnea -- which seems merely to be a
pathologizing name for the very easy way that Nature has
provided!

You see my dilemma. If I am on the track of an eventual gentle
death - and it may well be many years off, yet, for I have a light
case of the apnea - do I really want to prevent that, and increase
the chance of something more dreadful? I mean, why reject Nature's
considerate offer? Why buy into the dumb human hubris of trying to
live forever, when the sense of things shaping up is clearly to my
own benefit?

Well, Nature offers, but ... Spirit tells me otherwise! It's been
a classic instance of Innocence at work, the vision of which is
quite as clear to me as the case for Nature that I've just
painted. The run of Providence, as noted in the sequence of doctors,
was so clearly and strongly the cue of a trail, that I have to see it
as an overriding validation of where it has taken me. Spirit "tells
me," in effect, that I have to hang in; there are things to be taken
care of, before I can take my leave . . . and as to that gentle
death, I just have to trust it will be so.

I've assumed, up to now, that my remaining task is the completion
of my legacy web site, while I simply maintain a congenial pace with
Ripening Seasons. But I'm not entirely sure of that Winter
scenario. Innocence, of course, means never being sure of
anything . . . but it raises a kind of concern as one
confronts a narrowing horizon, when choices made could very well turn
out to be final choices, deserving of somewhat deeper
consideration. And this is surely the proper time for it -- very
clearly the turning point of a personal cycle.

Yes, I'm going to do my best with the web site -- that's already
underway. But I've been looking at the old habits my life is strewn
with, preoccupations that keep tripping me up, like library books I
never read (but spend a lot of time looking for, and lugging), and
classes that are taken just so I can keep checking out those library
books. The whole business is up for grabs, right now. And I've
finally managed to shut and bolt the door on the housing wars that
have taken so much of my energy in recent years. So a certain amount
of running room is opening up for me, or in prospect.

I'm even wondering - and I know you don't want to hear this - how
meaningful does Ripening Seasons continue to be for me? You
must be well aware that it isn't exactly sparking me, this year, as
it has in the past. Maybe it's just last year's lingering effect;
but, hey . . . six months since the turnover is a kind of long
"linger!" I've been expecting search parties, any day now. In truth,
I don't yet know what's up for Ripening Seasons, but one of
its original purposes was to chronicle the run-up to 2000, as I
recall, and that's done with.

Funny . . . I just looked back in the series to try and document
that, and found, in the very first issue, more than five years ago, a
consideration of the validity of Providence, leaning heavily into the
need for "letting things happen" in order to become aware of it - as
I've just been writing about once again! Could there be a better
illustration of "seeing the door I came in through"?

Energy is capricious and unpredictable at this stage of life -
just as is memory. If I tell you what I envision, at this moment, it
could totally shift by the time you get this mailing. So I'm not
going to make any predictions, let alone any commitment. All I can
tell you is where I'm at, and what's going on, right now, with
the caution that any conclusions you want to draw from it are
strictly your own.

The biggest thing happening in my world, right now, is the web
site. I'm full tilt at work on it again, corralling old material into
it as fast as current events allow. The run of past Ripening
Seasons is well on its way to completion, and the old Black
Bart series is finally going up, in representative selections of
content, with other writings gradually being brought on board. But
content is not the whole news of it. This new site, set to ultimately
become my permanent public archive, is organized on an entirely new
and much more accessible basis. Not as clever as the old one, but I
came to see that my cleverness had become too complicated for any
real utility, especially for anyone new to my writing. People had
been reading Innocence Abroad, and apparently getting boggled
by the rest of what was out there.

I'm also able to see, better than at first, the essential
advantage that a web site offers, over more traditional ways of text.
The key to any archival site is in how its contents are arranged for
access. So mine begins (once past the briefest of preliminaries) with
a four-way choice of preferred access mode. One is by venue, enabling
a fast shift to the sequential series of Ripening Seasons or
Black Bart, or any of the various other publications I've
written for, over the years. A second way of access is by overall
time sequence. A third (hardly begun) is a subject or theme index
linking readers directly to anything I ever wrote on a given topic.
This has proven a real challenge, to devise a framework for the most
utility and greatest ease of use. I won't elaborate it further, here
- you can go to the site and watch it evolve.

The fourth way of access is an index specifically geared to the
timeline of my life, covering only such material as I've written over
the years that is essentially autobiographical. And to serve the
particular way that I see my life, it will be parceled into 7-year
stages, offering first a thumbnail and then a general overview (newly
written) of each such segment, as well as providing the links to
anything already written about that particular septide of my
life.

I don't intend to confine this archive to material written for
publication. As time and focus allows, it will include large ranges
of personal journaling, so as to present the 'real life' warp and
weave of events that have shaped the way I see the world. I can do
this because I have software, now, that enables text entry by just
reading it in. Although it's not quite that simple with
journal material, which appears to call for a good deal of
present-day annotation if it is to make sense to anyone coming upon
my world for the first time. But it offers, by the same token, a
wonderful opportunity to reflect on past times, as I do it.

I'm reading through some of these old journals right now, in
evening sessions with Joy, and it's incredible how much of it I've
actually forgotten! I'm talking about less than fifteen years ago,
when I came to Seattle. And I thank the gods, for having kept me at
passably good journals on all of it! They serve, wonderfully, to
illuminate the way that I processed reality, in those days, and how I
kept on this strange trail of Innocence that has seen me
through so much.

It's not just a figure of speech, as some may suppose. The world,
on a path of Innocence, is constantly giving us a 'message text,' in
the things we encounter. As with all text, we read it on the basis of
prior experience, but the difference from ordinary life - and the
difference that keeps it uniquely fresh - is two-fold: 1) we seek the
hidden cues that are particularly personal, in what takes place - the
highly subjective parts of 'objective' experience; and 2) we proceed
to act on the basis of the awareness thus gleaned. We leave behind
the safe and scientistically prefered status of observer, and become
an active player in a world of evolving magic, vesting our entire
faith in the accuracy of our insight. The 'action' might be no more
than holding steady to an otherwise (or seemingly) 'blind' course,
when an objective and 'realistic' response would be to change
direction. It is magnificently validating, to brace yourself through
those passages, and then see events develop to confirm your
intuitions.

My life, now, is off this trail, in a sense, for I am settled,
comfortable and well-provided, as opposed to the chancy life I led
then. But I absorbed those ways, for having lived them over a long
stretch, and I often get glimpses of how they still work in my world.
I can even give you a beautiful example from the past week.

When I got my new iMac, late last year, I gave the old
Mac setup to friends Paula and Will, who could make good use of
it. But I kept the HP printer, thinking it could still serve me.
It later developed, however, that I was mistaken, and I had to
replace it, too. Since Will and Paula had their own printer by
now, I gave the HP to another friend, Ron, who had just, himself,
received the gift of an old Mac from a friend in Texas, but
without a printer to go with it. It was a neat fit, and set the
stage for what took place this past week.

Each of these friends needed help from me, to get their
equipment working smoothly. I was supposed to visit Ron on
Tuesday, a week ago, but things got too crowded for me, and at the
last minute it was put off for a full week. Meanwhile, I did get
out to Will's place on Saturday, and spent a few hours adjusting
the innards of their Mac's operating system - the one that had
formerly been mine. While at it, I happened to see some system
components that once supported the operation of the HP printer,
now uselessly taking up space in their present setup. It consisted
of three items, and I was about to trash them when I remembered
that I'd be helping Ron get the old HP up and running, in a few
days, and there was some chance they'd be of use to him. So I
copied them onto a floppy disk and took it with me.

Bear in mind that I had no intention of doing this, no
expectation that I would find said items there, or that Ron would
need them -- which is exactly what happened! Ron's printer would
not have worked without those items in his system, and I had no
other way, by now, of getting them! I wouldn't even have
known what was missing - but since I had the three of them
with me, by 'pure chance,' as it were, I put them in, and - bingo,
the printer printed!

And of course, had I kept my original Tuesday schedule to be at
Ron's a week earlier, I would not have had the floppy with me.

I hasten to point out that I was doing nothing out of the ordinary
-- not 'thinking Innocence,' nor particularly paying attention to
what was going on for me, but just doing what comes naturally in my
world. And how often in your world do such things happen? If
you've evolved into this way of life, it would be a regular
occurrence, though most often an invisible one, and occasionally very
exciting when it does become visible.

Well, I am more than twenty years into this way of life since it
became a really conscious thing for me. Innocence Abroad was a
celebration of living it in the full, on its most stimulating level.
For the rest, the adventure has been told in newsletters, highlighted
by fragments in Ripening Seasons, and muffled among the welter
of everyday ups and downs in my journals -- not a very integrated or
effective legacy to leave on my web site, though that is indeed the
purpose of it.

I had something better in mind for it, when I set out to write the
book. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but Innocence
Abroad was conceived as the first book in a trilogy (part of the
reason it felt okay to bring that bok to a somewhat abrupt closure).
But a unique trilogy, in that each book would flash back to
successively earlier stages. Nothing was about to keep me from
writing the freshest stage first, so that was the only way I could
envision it. But it felt like it would work structurally, too: the
first book showed how exciting and effective this way of life can be;
the second would recount the dedicated trail that brought me into it
- the ups and downs of getting it right; and the third would tell the
years of transition that took me from the old world to the trailhead
of the new. For it wasn't just accomplished by dropping out, it
required all of the mucking around of those Black Bart years,
before I could sense the potential of a whole other way of being that
could happen clear outside the framework of our obsession with
security and planning, our worry-wart assumption that if we don't
take active care of our future, it won't likely take decent care of
us.

And don't get me wrong, here . . . I'm well aware of the utility
value of arranging things so that our head is clear of anxieties. But
when that turns into locking our lives up, to avoid any
possible risk, it becomes a heavier burden than insecurity. The trail
of Innocence gradually expands our comfort zone in that wilderness of
not-knowing-what-may-happen, so that the anxiety diminishes --
not as every little loose end gets tied down, but as our
insight into a hidden reality of Providential dimensions continues to
deepen.

As it came to pass, I never even made a start on the other books,
when I couldn't find a publisher for the first. It sounds contrary to
a writer's code of dedication, to say something like that - or even
to stop seeking a publisher, with any halfway good book up for the
grab - but it's a mark of how deeply I am into this Innocence thing,
one of its key elements being a willingness to accept 'what's
happening' as an indicator of one's proper path. Thumbs up, or thumbs
down (as in this case), it has to be good enough for me.

The whole business, however, is instructive, as to the creative
aspect of reality. It is pretty clear to me that we are responsible,
to an extent hardly realized, for establishing the terms of our own
old-age reality. You see it every day, without even noticing it, in
the instance of how older folks seem able to 'get along' in their
individualized way - whether alone or assisted - with little energy
output. What has happened is that the basic energy pattern of their
world tends to consolidate as they age. Its focus is steadily
refined. For myself, I chose to live my life in defiance of the
success ethic, thus setting in motion this particular kind of
evolvement.

But putting my work out on the web doesn't require any publisher
connection, so it kind of reopens the issue for me. I'm not sure,
yet, whether I'm really going to pursue it, at this late stage, but I
toy with the idea. It would be nice to be working on something fresh,
along with putting my old writing onto the web site. But it would
also mean tilting my head more steeply toward the past than I may
like to, at this century turning point.

The answer is going to revolve around a question of what feels
best to be doing, with the time that remains to me. Personal
enjoyment is a large part of that equation, and to some extent the
energy that I possess for the task. Energy is not easy to guage,
since it becomes more fluid as I age, seemingly related to the
various cyclic passages I am going through. I've got some rough
guidelines, on that account, but their primary value is to cushion
the hard truth of a steady decline, that simply has to be faced as my
years get into the higher numbers. But the cycles play off against
one another, which makes prediction kind of tricky.

And that brings to mind the other intended book that lies
scattered in fragments, among my various writings. Having lived my
life, in its latter portion, consciously attuned to the calendar
patterns of its free-form evolvement, I accumulated a lot of
observational data that would support the notion of an archetypal
season cycle. I had always meant to pull together, into a
comprehensive and well-ordered text, the many strands of that
seasonal awareness . . . had even begun the effort, in Ripening
Seasons#20, as many of
you will recall, only to renege on its completion in this venue, for
being inappropriate to the Season Thrust, or Soul Thrust that I was
already well into - that of life's Wintertime, of course.

It was another way of seeing the circumstance, that the time in my
life for getting a work published had passed on by, laying it not to
the refinement of a basic energy pattern already developed, but to a
loss of the inner power (the Soul Thrust) that has such capability in
the Spring and Summertime of life. The two takes on it are not so far
different: the writer who has pursued and evolved a 'publication
reality' during his or her prime Seasons, when the Soul Thrust was
available for it, finds that the connection remains, in their later
years, in a refined form requiring much less energy outlay than it
earlier had.

These perspectives make the whole idea of publishing original
booklength material on the web, at my age, somewhat problematical -
but only as to its 'success' (in commonly defined terms). There is
nothing in such prospect, however, that can dim the personal
satisfaction of doing so -- so long as it is not 'success' that I am
seeking.

I would probably attempt to incorporate my seasonal views in the
Innocence trilogy, if I pursue that option, rather than try and do it
separately. I did, after all, devote a book-length departmental
thesis to it, at the university - which is now up on the web site, by
the way. As for all the scattered bits I've already written on it,
I'm reserving one of nine subject-specific indexes, on the new web
site, for that topic area alone. It is just a matter, now, of
necessary perseverance, in getting the work on it done.

If I do turn to a completion of the Innocence trilogy, I imagine
that Ripening Seasons will become 'part of the conspiracy.'
Probably as an outlet for portions of it - but not any full
production effort, I can assure you. Although, being as how it is
highly doubtful that any actual book will be published (in physical
form) - for all the reasons noted - anything that does come out in
these pages could well be the only print form it takes. So I guess
I'm not ready to close the spigot on Ripening Seasons,
after all.

It's probably a good bet, though, that everyone on my mailing list
will be on the internet within the next five years. I've noticed that
the laggards, even the Luddites among us, are gradually coming around
to the inevitability of it all. So that Ripening Seasons will
probably move seamlessly into an electronic version, and all this
talk about whether you will or won't see any lengthier work by me
will have no bearing on whether any of it gets printed, but only on
your internet capability and savvy. And, of course, the extent of
your interest.

Okay, this seems a fair summation of where I'm at, as we move
deeper into this first summer of these still puzzling new times - a
rather coolish summer, even for Seattle, and one in which uncertainty
just seems to hang in the air, as a Condition of Being, for these odd
days. More likely, it's just my own Fresh Septide, of a
now-familiar Winter way of being, that feels this way. It's not
uncomfortable. In fact, it's an oddly free feeling . . . almost as
if, in my lack of much concern for anything, time has actually slowed
down!